


To Be Alive

by Esteliel



Category: Les Misérables (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Barricade Day, Blow Jobs, Javert Lives, M/M, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-08 12:57:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19107553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/pseuds/Esteliel
Summary: It was easier than he’d feared to make his way to the barricade. The entire mission was stupid, of course; it stood to reason that with Javert taken prisoner, a second spy would stand even less of a chance to keep his cover.Still, Rivette didn’t have a choice. The moment the note about Javert’s capture came in, he knew what he had to do.





	To Be Alive

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Barricade Day! The sixth for me, the first for Rivette, so obviously I had to put him on the barricade, too!

It isn’t until the deafening sound of the gun being fired that Rivette realizes his plan has gone disastrously wrong.

It was easier than he’d feared to make his way to the barricade. The entire mission was stupid, of course; it stood to reason that with Javert taken prisoner, a second spy would stand even less of a chance to keep his cover.

Still, Rivette didn’t have a choice. The moment the note about Javert’s capture came in, he knew what he had to do.

Now that he’s standing in the tap-room of the wine-shop where the insurgents have tied the Chief to a post, he can see on Javert’s face that if he survives, he’ll receive a scolding like never before. That’s all right though. He’ll happily take a beating from the Chief’s own belt if it means that Javert survives this.

It’s just a pity that Rivette won’t be there to see it.

“Sorry, sir,” he murmurs, his voice sounding strangely distant in his own ears. “I’ve really messed up this time, haven’t I.”

Dimly, Rivette hears someone shouting. There’s enough time to wonder if that anguish is Javert’s. It’s a comforting thought. He didn’t manage to save Javert—but at least he dies with the awareness that Javert cares for him.

Then everything goes dark.

***

He’s drowning. Something dark and heavy is pulling at his limbs. He has to struggle to keep above the surface. It’s impossible to think. There’s a loud pounding in his ears, a rhythmic thunder that makes him shiver, and even though his limbs are freezing cold it feels as if someone is stabbing his shoulder with a white-hot knife.

Briefly, something cool and soft seems to touch his forehead. He likes to pretend he can hear a murmur of voices.

But he knows that he’s dead, and there’s nothing here in this Hell but the chaotic current of darkness that grabs hold of his thoughts and carries them away, one by one, until he finally releases his precarious hold and allows himself to sink under.

***

“Why did you do it?”

Javert’s voice. The realization makes Rivette smile.

It takes a long time until he remembers that he’s dead. By that time, there’s a second voice.

The thought that Javert died there with him at the barricade is still so painful and brings such guilt with it that by the time he can focus on the voices again, they’ve morphed into an argument.

“You make no sense.” There is Javert again, the sentence curt and gruff. This is the voice that makes every agent in the office cower. Javert’s in a bad mood, Rivette can tell. Only, he’s not shouting. His voice is strangely soft. “You’re mad.’

“No,” the other voice says. A man. Rivette doesn’t think he’s heard him before. “I don’t think so. Are you?”

There’s a brief struggle. Something scrapes across the floor, then there’s a dull thud. Perhaps a book falling to the floor. Next comes a long silence, and finally the soft panting of an animal.

“Maybe I am.”

There’s such despair in Javert’s voice that Rivette struggles with all his might to open his eyes, to reach out. He has to reassure Javert that even here, in Heaven or Hell or Purgatory, he’s not alone—but the darkness is already returning, grabbing hold of Rivette with hands of granite, heavy and implacable. At last Rivette surrenders himself to the yawning chasm in his mind and lets go.

***

Something cool touches his forehead. It’s strange that he feels as if he’s burning up when he’s already dead—unless this is Hell, and this fire that torments his body is no fever but the reward for the many years of small infractions and decidedly unchaste thoughts about his superior.

Rivette tries to moisten his lips. A moment later, something brushes his mouth. Then there’s cool liquid flowing down his parched throat, mingled with a herbal bitterness that seems familiar as well.

For a moment, he allows himself the fantasy of being cared for by Javert, his Chief’s eyes for once full of concern for him, the capable hands that are used to wielding the cane and restraining criminals now bathing his flushed chest with a damp cloth.

The fantasy doesn’t last for long. Rivette knows that he is dead, and if Javert is dead, too, he would have other concerns than tending to Rivette, who is trapped in a Purgatory of his own making.

Still, the hands that now carefully undress and wash him are so gentle that they cannot be a figment of his imagination. Neither can they be Javert’s. Angels, then, who have come to care for him.

The thought is almost embarrassing. He, Rivette, a constant disappointment to his superior, worthy of the attention of angels? Still, he has lived alone since he left his family and came to Paris as a young man. He almost forgot what it felt like to be cared for by his mother when he was a child. And even though he is certain that this isn’t going to last, it isn’t so bad to surrender himself to the comfort those gentle hands offer.

***

“You can’t leave. You can’t. I won’t allow it.”

Of course he won’t leave. He is dead, after all; where would he go? Rivette struggles to reassure Javert, but his tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth.

“I won’t,” the other voice says instead. “I told you. I’m yours now. Do what you want with me.”

Javert laughs, but it is no laugh Rivette has ever heard. It is a chilling sound; it makes him afraid, even here, when he is already tormented by the devils of Hell.

“What makes you think I want—”

Javert abruptly falls silent. Long minutes later, there is a moan.

“Let me send a letter to my daughter.”

“No,” Javert says immediately. He is breathing fast. There is a heavy thud—something dropping to the floor, perhaps, or a body pushed against a wall.

Someone is gasping for breath like a drowning animal.

Then: “Yes,” says Javert, and the dark river swallows Rivette once more.

***

The ground he rests on is moving beneath him. Heat is rushing through his veins, the tormenting demons returned to pierce his shoulder once more with the fiery dagger. He is burning from the inside, panting for breath, the air too hot to breathe. His gasps sound like those of an animal, and it takes long moments until he realizes that the sounds he hears aren’t his own.

When he at last succeeds in forcing his eyes open, he is met by a sight that can only be one of those tormenting visions bestowed by the demons of Hell.

His head is resting on a pillow. He is lying on a large bed. And there, close enough to touch if he had enough strength to lift his arm, is another head. The face is familiar, even though the eyes are squeezed shut and the mouth is wide open. It is from this mouth that the panting he has been hearing comes, the harsh, desperate gasps of an animal. The rhythm is familiar—it comes, Rivette realizes belatedly, in the same rhythm as the shifting of the bed beneath him. With every motion, the man’s face tenses—not quite agony, not quite pleasure, or perhaps too much of both.

It is unmistakable now what is going on. Rivette knows it even before a hoarse, helpless moan spills free from the man’s throat. Rivette is too distracted by another realization to wonder where this vision has come from, because in the strangely familiar lines of the man’s face Rivette’s real torment is revealed at last.

This is a face he has seen hundreds of times. It is a face that has haunted him as much as it has haunted Javert, staring furiously down at him from the wall behind Javert’s desk as the years passed.

Jean Valjean. The dangerous convict. Number 24601. Madeleine, the mayor of Montreuil.

Rivette cannot quite understand why the demons of Hell have chosen the vision of this man to torment him with until he realizes at last that there is a second voice—another throat from which sounds utter that are little more than animal groans, desperate and overwhelmed.

_Javert._

Rivette doesn’t have enough strength to even attempt to lift his head to see for himself. Instead, his vision growing blurry with tears, he is forced to keep his eyes on Valjean’s face.

Valjean doesn’t look dangerous. Not like he looked on the posters. He looks desperate. Pained. 

The bed shifts again and Valjean tenses, and as Rivette watches through a film of tears, he sees Valjean bite his own arm to muffle the sounds he is making. Even as Rivette feels himself pulled under again, he realizes that the convict is sobbing.

***

Rivette isn’t quite certain that he’s really dead. He thought so for the longest time, but he has a headache that doesn’t feel demonic in origin, and when he shifts, he can feel something wrapped around his aching shoulder. Surely neither Heaven nor Hell have need for bandages?

Once, he almost succeeds in forcing his eyes open. Bright sunshine greets him, his eyes immediately tearing up, and the pounding in his head intensifies until he gives in to the beckoning darkness once more.

The next time he resurfaces from the dark river, it feels more like waking from a long sleep than resurfacing from death. 

It is dark; there’s only the dim light of a candle burning somewhere in the distance. Something warm is resting by his side; when he shifts, it shifts as well in welcome, an arm coming around him. The limb feels stronger than Javert’s should be, but even though it’s too dark to see, he can smell the perfume of Javert’s soap: a scent that’s sharply wooden and herbal.

Even now, Rivette can’t quite say whether he is dead or alive, but at this moment, he doesn’t care. Javert’s arm wraps around him and holds him close, and Rivette eagerly breathes the clean scent of his skin. Even now, the heat that has scoured his veins with fever isn’t quite gone. He feels it spread through his body once more. Perhaps he really is alive then. Perhaps it really was simply a fever and not Purgatory that had him suffer these past days or weeks.

Only it is not quite that simple, he realizes with sudden mortification, for this heat is of a different nature. It isn’t his shoulder that is throbbing but his groin, his body hardening—and the evidence of it pressed rudely against Javert.

He can’t say if he has fallen asleep again or if it is his illness that makes time pass strangely, but Javert is no longer resting by his side. Instead, there is a gentle hand on his thigh, and then there is a mouth on him, soft and yet so hot that Rivette gasps. It envelops him, swallows him down eagerly, and Rivette hears himself cry out.

Javert takes him in deep, Rivette’s entire body tensing. It feels like drowning again, only this time he is drowning in heat and softness and a tender consideration that brings new tears to his eyes.

He’s still too weak to do more than simply lie there and gasp for breath. When he spends himself, it feels as if the gentle, coaxing mouth swallows down all of his remaining strength together with his release. His eyes drift shut once more, but even so he clings to consciousness for just one more moment, reaching down with a trembling hand until his fingers brush a warm cheek. Rivette smiles, relaxing into his pillow.

It is only then that his hand travels higher, and instead of the closely-cropped hair he had expected, his fingers glide through soft locks.

***

The fever returns after that night. Rivette knows now that it is a fever and that he is indeed alive, resting in Javert’s bedroom, which inexplicably also still seems to hold Jean Valjean when surely the convict should be in a cell somewhere. The doctor has been by to look at Rivette’s shoulder, and even while drifting in his fevered sleep, Rivette has been hearing some of the conversation.

It should be a relief to be alive, but to be alive means that the tormenting visions were no visions at all. It is Valjean he saw during those nights. Valjean arching next to him while Javert took possession of his body.

Certainly that can be reason enough not to return him to a judge, Rivette thinks bitterly, but perhaps it would be better to find himself in Purgatory than to return to a life where Javert is lost to him once and for all. Even now Rivette isn’t entirely certain what there is between these two.

Sometimes he wakes at night and finds the bed slowly rocking, Valjean’s face close to his own, an expression of agony still on his face although he and Javert move slowly in the light of the moon. Sometimes, Rivette wakes and finds Javert on one side of him, Valjean on the other.

Sometimes his body burns with the heat that isn’t quite a fever, and Valjean’s mouth works soft and hot between his legs to bring him relief.

Rivette doesn’t know what to make of it. There are no angels in this room, that much is certain.

***

It has to be very early, Rivette can tell by the light that fills the room. It is the soft light of earliest morning, the streets outside still empty and quiet. He feels very tired and weak—but something inside him seems aware in a way that he hasn’t experienced in a long time.

The ever-present, bitter aftertaste of laudanum is no longer on his tongue. A moment later, he realizes that he isn’t the only one awake.

The bed is shifting again. Rivette smiles bitterly.

Javert cannot even wait until he has his bed to himself again. No wonder that he’s been hunting this man for a decade.

Still, Javert is alive, and so is Rivette. He has no right to be ungrateful. He has always known that whatever he might dream of, Javert will never look at him in such a way.

And now Javert has his convict at long last.

 _Jean Valjean_. The man who has famously escaped any trap Javert has laid for him. It’s a surprise that Javert has allowed Valjean to buy his freedom with his body after all these years—but then, Rivette acknowledges when he opens his eyes to look the bitter truth in the face, perhaps, in the end, that is not so surprising after all.

Javert and Valjean are moving together. Valjean is on his back, Javert between his thighs. The blanket that covers Rivette covers them, too, shielding their lower bodies from his eyes—but it is enough to see the elegant arch of Javert’s back, the gleam of his skin that is slick with sweat, every muscle in his body tensing as he thrusts against Valjean.

He is beautiful, Rivette thinks dimly, who has ached to see him so for nearly a decade—his steely control gone, his intimidating features softened by pleasure, another moan escaping him as his hips roll against Valjean’s with luxurious slowness.

It’s all Rivette has ever truly wanted, to see this part of Javert that has always been hidden away. Now it has been revealed at last—but not for him.

Valjean is moaning too. His hands are on Javert’s shoulders, fingers digging in.

There is some resemblance to the posters in the lines of his face, but even now, when Rivette finds himself hating this man so bitterly who in the end has turned out to be a thief after all, there’s little of the fearsome convict in him. His hair is going gray; it’s damp with sweat. It’s obvious that Valjean is trying to be quiet: his lips are swollen and bruised, bitten to stave off his moans.

Not that Rivette can blame him for the sounds he is making, because God knows Rivette would be moaning too if that were him, skin to skin with Javert.

Then Valjean tenses, another moan breaking free. It comes out strangely thin, more a sound of loss than pleasure. His head shifts on the pillow. He is facing Rivette now, who can see that Valjean’s eyes are closed; as he watches, tears run down Valjean’s cheeks even as he exhales another sound of aching pleasure.

Rivette hates him, this man who cries as he takes what Rivette has dreamed of for so long.

He can’t make sense of him. He can’t make sense of anything. Why is he here? Why have they not left him behind to die at the barricade?

Why not leave him in his own small apartment, with a doctor to come look at him every now and then?

Javert gasps, his hips coming forward, the bed shifting beneath Rivette. It’s hard to take his eyes off Javert. Even now, with Rivette’s chest tight with a hurt that cuts much deeper than the wound in his shoulder, he can’t look away as Javert works for his and Valjean’s pleasure with a slow insistence that Rivette might have called gentle, if it was any other man.

Javert has never been gentle. Never, in all the many years Rivette has known him.

His eyes fall on Valjean again, who is breathing harshly, his lips parted, his cheeks still wet with tears. The sight makes Rivette feel helpless. He can still remember the sensation of Valjean’s mouth on him.

Something inside him clenches with jealousy and a helpless, painful longing, and he watches himself reach out. His fingertip traces along the wet path of a tear. Valjean’s eyes open at the touch, but that is the only reaction to Rivette’s awareness. Javert’s hips continue to roll against Valjean, who continues to gasp little moans, his breath hot against Rivette’s fingers.

The jealousy inside Rivette continues to burn brighter. It coils inside his stomach as if it’s going to eat its way out through his chest, and it’s only when Javert and his convict find release at last that Rivette realizes that he is trembling with need, his cock painfully hard beneath the blanket.

Javert rolls off Valjean. There’s something languid about him now, something indulgent and relaxed. That is something Rivette has never seen before either.

Javert exhales a sound of amusement at the sight of Valjean’s tears. Despite his earlier gentleness, there’s something bitter and brittle in it. Then he nudges Valjean, who moves beneath the blanket without protest. His mouth is just as hot as Rivette remembers, and Javert makes another sound of amusement at Rivette’s gasp.

“Good at that, is he?” Javert murmurs. “At least he’s useful. Dragged both of you through a sewer…”

Rivette thinks about how useful he has been during the past years. He doesn’t say it, but surely Javert must know it. He reaches down to push the blanket out of the way. Valjean’s head is between his legs, his swollen lips spread around his cock. Still a thief then.

Rivette runs his fingers through Valjean’s hair again, remembering the fevered nights of his convalescence. A moment later, Javert reaches out as well, his fingers hesitant as they stroke through Valjean’s hair. They do not pull away when they touch Rivette’s fingers. Instead, they cover his hand, hold it in place on the warm, vulnerable skull. Beneath them, Valjean works Rivette unhurriedly.

Rivette looks at Javert again. He wants to know what happened between them. He wants to know why he is still here, with them.

Instead, he watches Javert until Javert looks away, his shoulders beginning to shake. Rivette doesn’t quite know what to do. It seems impossible that Javert should cry.

Valjean is still working between his legs. Perhaps he is weeping too.

Clumsily, Rivette reaches out and curves his hand around Javert’s bare shoulder. He wants to say something. He needs to tell Javert that he’s grateful to be saved. That he won’t make any trouble; that he’ll leave once he’s stronger.

Instead, Valjean’s tongue curves warm and soft around his prick, Valjean’s head sliding up and down untiringly, without protest, as if it’s an act of penance, or prayer, or maybe simply the dedication of a man who likes to feel useful. Rivette knows all about that.

But even that bitterness is stripped away from him by the gentleness of Valjean’s mouth. Rivette finds himself gasping helplessly, burying his nails in Javert’s skin as his stomach tightens. He can’t stop moaning. He feels as if he’s falling again, as if something wants to pull him under; when he finally lets go, pleasure rushing through him, something catches him.

Javert’s hands are on his arms. Javert’s mouth is on his.

Javert swallows his moans as Valjean works to produce them, and Rivette trembles between them until he can no longer think.

When he falls asleep, it’s with one of them on each side of his body, Valjean’s mouth still bitter with his release when he kisses him. When he wakes, Javert’s arm is slung around his waist, Valjean warm against his back, the room filled by bright sunlight. 

No, there are no angels in this room. No demons either, he’s starting to believe.

Perhaps all that matters now is that they’re alive. It’s all anyone can hope for, really.


End file.
